I usually find Slant's lists more interesting than most, and this year is no exception. I've been eager to see Kairo, Wolf Creek, and The New World, and their presence on both lists has me even more excited. Of those listed that I've seen, only Mysterious Skin is a shoe-in my own 10-best list*, but A History of Violence and Nobody Knows also have a pretty good shot.

*You know, if I actually get around to finishing my best-of piece this year..._________________Michael Scrutchin
Flipside Movie Emporium
www.flipsidearchive.com

I'm not sure if Aeon Flux's submerged anti-science and technophobic sentiment is specifically religiously conservative (liberals tend to be just as paranoid, although the specifics of their fretfulness differ), but I can say I was disappointed in the script?s tiresome commitment to what might be termed ?traditional procreation? and the value it places on the stagnation of humanity as a species. Such absolutes are completely antithetical to Peter Chung?s animated series, which never took sides between the ostensible good and bad guys and dared to tread dangerous philosophical ground.

Amusingly, in Schager's review of the movie, he notes that the most "distasteful facet" of Flux is the "sight of an African-American warrior (Sophie Okonedo) with hands for feet, a distasteful vision of the archaic blacks-as-monkeys stereotype that truly takes the repugnant cake;" a connection, ironically, that only a ultra-PC liberal would make._________________"If you're talking about censorship, and what things should be shown and what things shouldn't be shown, I've said that as an artist you have no social responsibility whatsoever."